Jennifer Durrant

{{Short description|British artist}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

Jennifer Durrant {{Post-nominals|post-noms=RA}} (born 17 June 1942) is a British artist.

Jennifer Durrant was born in Brighton on 17 June 1942, and studied at the Brighton College of Art from 1959 to 1963, and at the Slade School of Art from 1963 to 1966.{{cite web | last=Royal Academy of Arts | url=https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/artist/46 |title=Jennifer Durrant RA (b. 1942) | accessdate= 5 March 2020}}

In 1971 she began to work at the Stockwell Depot, a former brewery in Stockwell forming a co-operative studio and exhibition space,{{cite web |title=Stockwell Depot 1967–79 |url=https://www.ridinghouse.co.uk/publications/137 |publisher=Ridinghouse |accessdate=5 March 2020}} described as "a rough and tough environment". The influential critic Clement Greenberg visited the Depot in 1978 and praised her work.

As a visiting lecturer she was to teach at numerous art schools, including Canterbury College of Art. In 1979 she was invited by the artist Stass Paraskos to be an artist-in-residence at the Cyprus College of Art arts centre in Paphos on the island of Cyprus.Michael Paraskos, et al, Stass Paraskos (London: Orage Press, 2010) In 1979–80 she was artist-in-residence at Somerville College, Oxford.{{cite web|url=https://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/bright-paintings-and-twisted-metal-sculptures-from-europe-are-gallerys-late-summer-showcase-188969/|title=Painter Jennifer Durrant and sculptor David Evison present Made in Europe showcase at Linden Hall Studio in Deal|date=2 September 2018|website=KM Group}} She moved to Umbria, Italy, in 2000,{{cite web |title=Jennifer Durrant Biography |url=http://www.artnet.com/artists/jennifer-durrant/biography |publisher=Artnet |accessdate=5 March 2020}} and works in a studio overlooking Lake Trasimeno, and also has a home in her birth town of Brighton.

Her work is held in collections including Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Neue Galerie, Aachen, Tate Gallery, London, The Government Art Collection, ICI Millbank, National Westminster Bank, New York, and Union Bank of Switzerland, London.

A 2008 article describes her art as "instantly recognisable: bands of colour, painted in acrylic and gouache, are overlaid with vivid dots of contrasting colour. Abstract and spontaneous in their intentional asymmetry, they borrow from nature but are in no sense literal."{{cite web |last1=Maddocks |first1=Fiona |title=In the studio with Jennifer Durrant RA |url=https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/in-the-studio-jennifer-durrant |website= |publisher=Royal Academy |accessdate=5 March 2020 |date=21 November 2008}} {{As of|2020}} the Royal Academy shop offers notecards, aprons and teatowels featuring these characteristic designs.